Backyard Chickens & Bees

In 2010, I made a batch of cider using the “juice apples” available at Kiyokawa Orchard in Parkdale. It was good cider, although a bit bland due to the dryness, mild acidity, and lack of tannins. So I thought I’d make it a bit better with some bottle conditioning to produce a true “sparkling” cider [...]

 Nat brought over some very nice apples today that I added to the 98 lbs of crab apples, and I spent about 4.5 hours grinding and pressing them all out for cider. Well, 604 lbs of them were pressed. There were some Newtown Pippens left over, but I just couldn’t squeeze them into the press. [...]

This coming weekend will be cider-making, round 3. I lent Nat West of Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider my grinder so that he could breeze through several tons of apples for a commercial venture, and in exchange he’s providing me with some apples for another batch of cider. This one will be a blend of 25% [...]